The Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn

Author:Suzannah Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Lucy Cornwallis

WINTER 1535–6

My name, hissed.

And again.

It’s Richard.

How long have I been sleeping through this?

A Hettie-sound: scritch of a blanket; she’s stirring.

‘Lucy?’ again, from behind the door.

And nearer, from Hettie-darkness: ‘’s Mr Cornwallis.’

Yes, I know. Why does she always call him ‘Mr Cornwallis’?

I must have made some sound of assent, because the door separates from its frame; the gap turning the pale, fluid gold of tallow-light. A figure looms and sits—thud— on my bed, his face recognizable when he places the flame by his feet. Less recognizable is the man-scent: I know it from Kit and Stephen, but from Richard, and up close, in my own room, at night, it’s a small shock. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Stone-cold sober.’ He sounds it, too.

I’ve been jammed up against sleep, and now I’m falling away. ‘What time is this?’

‘Don’t know.’

The embers are dead. The air beyond my blankets is freezing; it’s pinging tight on my skin. Greenwich, I tell myself. This is my Greenwich room: that, there, is my Greenwich-room window. Is this night or nearly morning? A dead-of-winter morning, faint-hearted, rousing itself at the last minute. I remember, now, coming to bed exhausted. The day after Twelfth Night, the busiest of our twelve busiest nights of the year. Thirteenth night, this would be. All we did, all day, was clear up. ‘Richard—’

‘I know. I’m sorry. We’re all very tired, aren’t we.’ He’s hunched.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘And they’re still partying.’

‘Who is? Where?’ I can’t hear anything. What I hear, when I listen hard, is a nothing made of trees and the river.

‘The great and the good,’ he says. ‘And the less good.’ His sigh, despite its heaviness, sounds distant. ‘It’s such a busy old world, here, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, and you like that.’ So, stop bothering me and go away. I turn over, shut him out.

He says, ‘I did like it.’

I keep my eyes closed. ‘Richard, what’s the matter?’

‘Oh, you know,’ it’s coming, now, in a rush, ‘when you haven’t seen someone properly for a while and you’re really looking forward to seeing them again—just for half an hour at the end of the evening—but then they’re busy. Suddenly there’s a party, and they’re going to be kept busy all night.’ He adds, ‘But of course you don’t know, do you,’ and in his voice there’s a smile that’s no smile at all. ‘Cool-headed Lucy, untroubled by matters of the heart.’

Oh, go away. ‘I might surprise you, one day.’

‘Why, what you gonna do? Marry Kit, or something?’ Immediately, he’s contrite: ‘I’m sorry. You’re beautiful and wonderful and you’re wasted. And that makes two of us.’

He’s being impossible; it’s best to keep to practicalities—to deal with him; to get this over with—which is why I roll back and ask him, ‘Do you need to sleep in here?’ Because this might just be what he’s after. He did share my room for years, until he was allocated his own, and he was never beyond an occasional nightmare.

‘Thank you, but no. I’m all grown-up, now.’ A glint in his eyes. ‘Unfortunately.

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